During the 2009-2010 academic year, six Cornell students committed suicide. Three of them did so in the second semester jumping off the school’s iconic–and now somewhat notorious–bridges that traverse very deep gorges. The first to do so was Michael Bradley, a freshman with no history of mental illness who was reportedly doing well academically and showed no signs of depression.

His father, a Cornell alumn, filed a lawsuit against the university, the City of Ithaca (where the school is located), and against Cornell’s president and vice president. The latter two suits were struck down by the courts, but the first two are set to begin trial in early September.

Tyler Alicea of the Cornell Daily Sun reports:

Trial Against Cornell, Ithaca Over 2010 Bridge Suicide to Begin

Update on August 13: The trial has been postponed and will begin on Sept. 8, The Ithaca Journal reports.

A lawsuit against Cornell and the City of Ithaca filed by the father of a student who jumped to his death from the Thurston Avenue Bridge in 2010 is scheduled to proceed in court in Utica, New York, Tuesday morning.

Howard Ginsburg ’70 sued Cornell and the City of Ithaca for millions of dollars after his son Bradley Ginsburg’s ’13 death in February 2010, arguing that the responsible parties focused on aesthetics rather than suicide prevention when renovating the Thurston Avenue Bridge in 2006 and 2007.

Cornell and the city said they sought to address safety concerns when redesigning the bridge, according to court papers.

Howard Ginsburg, however, argues that the University and the city focused too much on preserving the gorge’s landscape and “did nothing to achieve [the] goal” of adding suicide prevention measures.

“In every instance where design safety issues conflicted with aesthetic concerns, the safety concerns lost out,” Howard Ginsburg said in a memo submitted to the court.

Still, both Cornell and the City of Ithaca contend that the bridge lacked horizontal footholds that could have allowed for easier climbing and was not in “dangerous and defective condition,” according to court documents.